Doris Day, screen star and singer, dead at 97

FILE - In this April 15, 1955 file photo, American actress and singer Doris Day holds a bouquet of roses at Le Bourget Airport in Paris, France after flying in from London. Day, whose wholesome screen presence stood for a time of innocence in '60s films, has died, her foundation says. She was 97. The Doris Day Animal Foundation confirmed Day died early Monday, May 13, 2019, at her Carmel Valley, California, home. (AP)

Film star Doris Day, the sunny girl next door who held up her wholesome end beside box-office bigshots like Rock Hudson and Cary Grant, died Monday. She was 97.

Day, who became an animal rights advocate, died surrounded by close friends at her home near Carmel Valley, Calif., according to the Doris Day Animal Foundation.

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She “had been in excellent physical health for her age until recently contracting a serious case of pneumonia,” the foundation said in a statement.

Day, who was also a successful recording artist best known for her dreamy ditty “Que Sera, Sera, had refreshing roles in “Pillow Talk” and “That Touch of Mink.” She was innocence personified on the big screen, the face behind family-friendly movies of the 1950s and ′60s that appealed to parents and their kids.

The running joke, attributed to both Groucho Marx and actor-composer Oscar Levant, was that they had known Day "before she was a virgin."

But if directors wanted someone to play Doris Day in a movie, they might have wanted to stay away from Doris Day.

The real-life star was beset by money woes and saddled with three bad marriages. She told all about her tumult in her 1976 tell-all book, “Doris Day: Her Own Story.”

"I have the unfortunate reputation of being Miss Goody Two-Shoes, America's Virgin, and all that,” she wrote. “So I'm afraid it's going to shock some people for me to say this, but I staunchly believe no two people should get married until they have lived together.”

Day and her fans managed to separate her personal and professional lives. Although she had mostly been retired from show business since the 1980s, Day received a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004, and still had enough of a following that a 2011 collection of previously unreleased songs, “My Heart,” hit the Top 10 in the United Kingdom.

The same year, she received a lifetime achievement honor from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.

Doris Mary Ann von Kappelhoff was born April, 3, 1922 in Cincinnati to a music teacher and a housewife. The girl named after silent movie actress Doris Kenyon dreamed of a dance career, but at age 12 her leg was badly broken when a car she was traveling in was hit by a train.

She listened to the radio while she recuperated, singing along with Ella Fitzgerald.

Soon, she began singing at a Cincinnati radio station, then a nightclub, then in New York. A bandleader changed her name to Day after the song "Day after Day" to fit it on a marquee.

Day broke into show business as a singer, scoring a hit,”Sentimental Journey,” with bandleader Les Brown in 1945. Her 1956 song, “Que Sera, Sera,” possibly the most carefree song ever recorded, was her other big chart topper. She performed it in the Alfred Hitchcock thriller “The Man Who Knew Too Much.”

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Her film career included movies in just about every genre, including the Western musical “Calamity Jane” in 1953, the biopic “Love Me or Leave Me” in 1955, the political thriller “The Man Who Knew Too Much” in 1956, and romantic comedies “Pillow Talk” in 1959, “Lover Come Back” in 1960 and “Move Over, Darling” in 1963.

"It is with profound sadness that we say goodbye to our friend Doris Day, legendary actress, singer, & fierce animal advocate," the Humane Society of the United States said in a statement. "Though she will be missed, we can't thank her enough for her admiration & devotion to animals."

Day had one son, Terry Melcher, who died in 2004.

Day’s “wishes were that she have no funeral or memorial service and no grave marker,” according to her foundation."